Microsoft looking into Windows 7 battery life failures

Microsoft says it is investigating issues in Windows 7 that affect batteries …

Microsoft says it is investigating reports of notebooks with poor battery life with Windows 7, as first reported by users on Microsoft TechNet. These users claim their batteries were working just fine under Windows XP and/or Windows Vista, and others are saying it occurs on their new Windows 7 PCs. Under Microsoft's latest operating system though, certain machines aren't doing so well, as Windows 7 spits out the following warning message: "Consider replacing your battery. There is a problem with your battery, so your computer might shut down suddenly." The warning is normally issued after using the computer's basic input output system (BIOS) to determine whether a battery needs replacement, but in this case it appears the operating system and not the battery is the problem. These customers say their PC's battery life is noticeably lower, with some going as far as saying that it has become completely unusable after a few weeks of use. To make matters worse, others are reporting that downgrading back to an earlier version of Windows won't fix the problem.

The thread has managed to garner some 350 posts over the last eight months, about half of which were posted over the last month or so. The only official answer was posted and approved by a Microsoft moderator in June: "Windows 7 has had issues identifying certain batteries, as you can easily see searching the forum," wrote Adam M, Microsoft Certified Professional. "Due to such prevalence, it is safe to say the issue will be addressed. Thank you for reporting your troubles on the forums."

We contacted Microsoft to see if the company had made any headway. "We are investigating this issue in conjunction with our hardware partners," a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. "The warning received in Windows 7 uses firmware information to determine if battery replacement is needed. We are working with our partners to determine the root cause and will update with information and guidance as it becomes available."

Brian Ehlert, a Microsoft MVP, posted eight times in the thread, having begun to experience the issue as well. He went from having three hours of battery life on beta and RC builds of Windows 7 to about 20 minutes on Windows 7 RTM (and from eight hours to 15 minutes on another computer). He also responded to a workaround for disabling Windows 7 from shutting down on battery issues saying that this may result in the operating system shutting down later, but saying that it doesn't fix the root cause of the problem. Another fix that worked for some, but not for Ehlert, was letting the battery drain completely outside of the operating system so that it is recalibrated. Ehlert's last response in the thread was that he went out to buy a new battery, though he has yet to report back if this fixed the problem or if the second battery is following the first one to an early grave.

The battery life issue on Windows 7 actually dates back to June 2009, according to the forum thread. At the time, Windows 7 wasn't yet released, but the issue was apparently in both the beta and Release Candidate builds. Apparently the problem wasn't widespread enough for Microsoft's quality control team to fix it in time for the RTM build compiled in July 2009, though some users say they've only started to notice the issue with the RTM build and that beta builds worked just fine.

Windows 7 was supposed to extend battery life on notebooks, and in almost every case it certainly has. Nevertheless, there are always a few users who have issues. Microsoft's stance is that the root cause of the issue is related to specific system firmware, meaning it only affects machines with certain BIOS releases. Judging from the forum thread, however, customers disagree with Microsoft's explanation since the problem appears to affect notebooks from more than just one OEM, and some claim their vendors have informed them that it's a Microsoft problem. The phrase "class action lawsuit" is mentioned by three different posters so far; users are getting impatient with the software giant as it fails to give a timely official response. Microsoft has sold more than 60 million copies of Windows 7, and it's not clear what fraction of those owners are having problems with battery life.

Originally posted by middleware:Yes, that's true. The iPhone developer agreement rules that third party VM is not allowed. There has been example that an app containing a script language, though disabled, but then hacked by user to re-enable, and then banned by Apple.

Yeah, I remember that example too. It was a Commodore 64 Emulator where you could press a button and access C64 Basic. Yeah, that made sense.

For my point of view of moderating the official Windows 7 IT Pro feed on Twitter and the WIndows 7 ENterprise feed (@MSSpringboard and @CIOsConnect respectively) I can tell you that I've asked the question many time of whether or not Windows 7 was affecting our audience's battery life on their laptop.

I even made a twtpoll. We've seen a majority of users report increases in battery life (depending on drivers) and a couple of people reported a slight decrease in battery life, but nothing like this. I have no idea how many people are affected, but it's none of the 13,000 people I interact with on a daily basis.

I'm actually part of ArsClan, and I have been trying to contact ArsTechnica for a while to publish this article.

To add to the story, I actually bought two new batteries to prove that it is not a hardware problem. The first battery I plugged in with Windows 7 as the OS. The battery died within a week. The 2nd battery I ran with Windows Vista, and I ran it for a month with no problems. Once I formatted the computer, went to Windows 7, installed all Windows 7 drivers, and made sure the system was running properly, I installed the battery. The battery lasted a little over a week and then died, exactly like the last two batteries. Batteries have an EEPROM in them storing values like the battery's total capacity, what it's last charge capacity was, voltage, etc. The chip monitors all the characteristics/voltage of the battery. Basically it keeps statistics of the battery to make sure that the voltage is the same and the battery is charging properly. Once it detects that the battery is bad it stops the laptop from charging it. OEMs do not have ACPI drivers. Windows has always issued the ACPI, battery control drivers in their operating system. My observation is, Windows 7 is writing corrupt values into the battery's EEPROM causing the battery to think that something is wrong when it really is not. Once that is compromised, the battery will refuse to charge properly. On some batteries that I've seen, the value of the max capacity changes to 655360 (odd to see that number here), and the battery health percentage turns into a really large value (eg: 724500%)

My battery life has been decreasing steadily too ever since I installed win7. Previously it would get around 2 hours on a full charge; now it won't last more than 45 minutes to an hour.

I checked the wear level with an app and it is at 49% (!!). I chalked it up to old age but now that I have seen this article, I suspect win7 may be the culpirt. The battery is dying too fast for natural wear and tear to be responsible.

Originally posted by DanLee81:I'm actually part of ArsClan, and I have been trying to contact ArsTechnica for a while to publish this article.

To add to the story, I actually bought two new batteries to prove that it is not a hardware problem. The first battery I plugged in with Windows 7 as the OS. The battery died within a week. The 2nd battery I ran with Windows Vista, and I ran it for a month with no problems. Once I formatted the computer, went to Windows 7, installed all Windows 7 drivers, and made sure the system was running properly, I installed the battery. The battery lasted a little over a week and then died, exactly like the last two batteries. Batteries have an EEPROM in them storing values like the battery's total capacity, what it's last charge capacity was, voltage, etc. The chip monitors all the characteristics/voltage of the battery. Basically it keeps statistics of the battery to make sure that the voltage is the same and the battery is charging properly. Once it detects that the battery is bad it stops the laptop from charging it. OEMs do not have ACPI drivers. Windows has always issued the ACPI, battery control drivers in their operating system. My observation is, Windows 7 is writing corrupt values into the battery's EEPROM causing the battery to think that something is wrong when it really is not. Once that is compromised, the battery will refuse to charge properly. On some batteries that I've seen, the value of the max capacity changes to 655360 (odd to see that number here), and the battery health percentage turns into a really large value (eg: 724500%)

Wow. And here I thought I was having some weird issue with Win7 driver issues and my wife's laptop.

I upgraded her 2 year old Compaq Presario laptop from Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Ultimate (both 32bit) even though the support pages at HP/Compaq show her laptop as not being supported for Win7 which means they were not going to be providing any Win7 specific drivers. After the upgrade (clean install actually) I noticed a few missing drivers in Device Manager and managed to get them resolved with some Vista drivers. The one sticking problem was the battery icon showing a red X and the message that the battery should be replaced soon. I thought it was odd considering that in Vista the battery still was able to go for 1.5 - 2.0 hours. I never unplugged though for almost a week while I searched for drivers and googled to see if there was some other issue at play.

The wife ended up using it unplugged one day and she mentioned that her battery life was very bad. I tried it out and sure enough, the battery lasted only 20 minutes when unplugged. I thought it was very odd so I installed Ubuntu to see what it would say about the battery. At this point I thought that yeah maybe the battery was bad considering it was almost two years old. Ubuntu said that it wasn't a very good battery and that its charging capacity was limited. I think something like 5mw out of 80mw. So yeah it too was saying I should get a new battery. So I ordered a new 12 cell battery for her laptop and the red X disappeared and her notebook lasted for hours.

Now I see this article and the Technet thread and I'm really worried that the $130 battery I just bought might end up dying a quick death since others like DanLee81 have wasted 2 good batteries in doing more tests.

I'll state that this battery behaviour was NEVER experienced with Vista and even prior to upgrading from Vista the battery was still good. Should I remove the new battery and put the old one in and just run on the cable until this is resolved?

I'm pretty sure this issue is also affecting my wife's computer, an HP dv6000-series laptop. I left the hard drive with Windows Vista on it intact, removing it and installing a completely separate hard drive for trying out Windows 7 on the machine. After only a few hours of poking around with Windows 7, I swapped the Vista hard drive back in. However, ever since then, the system will only run for 20-30 minutes on battery, a dramatic reduction from its previous performance. It's clear to me that Windows 7 did mess up something in the battery firmware/EEPROM; I'm pretty sure that the hardware is not physically damaged, but to the end user the result is the same.

This issue seems widespread and repeatable enough that I'm hopeful between HP and Microsoft a software fix and/or firmware upgrade can be produced to rehabilitate all of these "damaged" battery packs.

Originally posted by blargh:This issue seems widespread and repeatable enough that I'm hopeful between HP and Microsoft a software fix and/or firmware upgrade can be produced to rehabilitate all of these "damaged" battery packs.

You can't say that the issue is between JUST HP and Microsoft. If it is a firmware issue (which I do not think it is since this is beyond one OEM) then Samsung, LG, Fujitsu, Sony, Acer, Asus, Dell, Compaq/HP, and anyone else who is affected by this problem has to come out with a firmware/BIOS update for ALL notebooks that have this issue, which will be close to impossible since OEMs will probably only update their latest laptop line's BIOS/Firmware. Also, lets look at the other side of things and assume its firmware. If it is the firmware causing the issue, wouldn't Ubuntu, Vista, XP or any other operating system have the same issue? Why is this problem isolated to just ONE operating system?